Tarrin Wills - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Tarrin Wills

Lexicon Poeticum - Skaldic words beginning

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Jul 1, 2021

Kennings and variability

European Journal of Scandinavian Studies

A casual examination of the skaldic corpus suggests that a very large proportion of kennings are ... more A casual examination of the skaldic corpus suggests that a very large proportion of kennings are unique, that is, the nouns that form a kenning are very unlikely to appear elsewhere as a kenning, even when grammatical variation is taken into account. This enormous productivity is due to the principle of variability and substitution in kennings. The phenomenon is discussed in Fidjestøl’s 1974 structural analysis of the kenning system and presented there as a reversal of the principle of linguistic economy. This paper investigates this phenomenon by quantitatively analysing the kenning corpus as recorded in the skaldic database, in order to identify matching kennings within the corpus. The results are broken down according to the complexity of the kennings in question and are then examined in relation to the structural framework of the kenning system. It is shown, firstly, that a relatively small number of kennings are repeated (10–12 % of kennings are repeated), but that there is a f...

Text - Anonymous Poems, Hugsvinnsmál

Anonymous íslendingaþættir, Kumblbúa þáttr

Anonymous Poems, Hafliðamál

Relational data modelling of textual corpora: The Skaldic Project and its extensions

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2013

Skaldic poetry is a highly complex textual phenomenon both in terms of the intricacy of the poetr... more Skaldic poetry is a highly complex textual phenomenon both in terms of the intricacy of the poetry and its contextual environment. Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications such as that of the Text Encoding Initiative provide a means of semantic representation of some of these complexities. XML, however, has limitations in representing semantic relationships that do not conform to the tree model. This article presents the relational data model as a way of representing the structure of skaldic texts and their contextual environment. The relational data model raises both problems and possibilities for this type of project. The main problem addressed here is the representation of the syntagmatic structures of texts in a data model that is not intrinsically ordered. The advantages are also explored, including networked data editing and management, quantitative linguistic analysis, dynamic representation of the data, and the ability to extend the structure and reuse data for related projects without creating redundancy.

Medieval texts and cultures of Northern Europe, 2007

This paper presents an example of how a digital historical dictionary can be reengineered for new... more This paper presents an example of how a digital historical dictionary can be reengineered for new uses and new audiences, without changing the underlying data and editing processes. We start from the premise that a large proportion of users of historical dictionaries will be using them to read specific old texts as part of their studies or research in fields that use the texts as source material (literature, history, religion, etc.). Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP) has a vast archive of digitized texts, together with detailed referencing sufficient, in theory, to generate a glossary for each page and line of the texts. For the feature demonstrated here we reverse the normal dynamic dictionary-generation process. Instead of generating dictionary entries, the application searches for citations on an edition page and generates a running glossary to the edition, displaying it alongside the edition text. In this paper we present the new public interface to the dictionary (currently at onp.ku.dk) and the contextual glossaries that are generated from the dictionary's data. These have been developed using adaptive web technologies for use on a range of devices, including tablets and phones.

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

This study applies statistical approaches to the analysis of the genre relationships of Old Norse... more This study applies statistical approaches to the analysis of the genre relationships of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in order to expand our understanding of the relationships between works, their transmission, and their possible modes of reception, as manifested in the extant manuscripts. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the genre boundaries of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and presents an alternative method of engaging with this material in the form of computer-assisted analysis, i.e. data visualization and network analysis. Using data collected from major online databases of Old Norse-Icelandic manuscripts, we present the most complete to date network of co-occurrences in manuscripts of works belonging to a number of literary genres. The present study empirically demonstrates the manifoldness of the connections between the Old Norse-Icelandic works which transcend traditional scholarly genre boundaries. The study identifies two main communities within the n...

User Interfaces for Creating Digital Research

Research Methods for the Digital Humanities, 2018

This chapter focuses on the interaction between researchers and the data they create and work wit... more This chapter focuses on the interaction between researchers and the data they create and work with, that is, the user interface (UI). This chapter starts with a short history of UIs as a means of understanding attitudes towards technology. It describes different types of users of research resources, and how their background in the discipline and/or digital methods affects the way they interact with the data. The chapter goes on to outline different scenarios and solutions appropriate to each; and gives a specific example of a complex web application with a UI designed for different users and devices. Finally, it outlines some well-established principles for designing UIs.

Christopher Abram: Myths of the Pagan North: The Gods of the Norsemen

Scandinavica, 2011

In this article we discuss the evolution of data collection and use in the context of A Dictionar... more In this article we discuss the evolution of data collection and use in the context of A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP), which is a dictionary covering the medieval language of Iceland and Norway. This dictionary started as a collection of citations on paper slips, which were later used as the lexicographical material for a multi-volume, but incomplete, print edition. Today the citations form the basis of the digital version of ONP, currently available online at onp.ku.dk [1]. We account for the evolution of the data within three different periods, separated by certain milestones. We demonstrate how the legacy data have evolved and been enhanced throughout the years to provide innovative ways to bring together and take advantage of all the information gathered by ONP dur-

Narratives and textual sources

Traditional excerption-based historical dictionaries often provide a very detailed semantic analy... more Traditional excerption-based historical dictionaries often provide a very detailed semantic analysis of a high proportion of words in the corpora they cover. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose will have analyzed and defined around 7% of all words in a 11 million word corpus, for example. Linking the semantic analysis of excerpted citations to new digital texts of the works in the corpus offers the potential to give much more detailed context for the citations in the dictionary and at the same time contextual semantic information (definitions) for a high proportion of specific words in the corpus. The task is nontrivial as it involves linking separately-formed datasets consisting of tens of thousands of tokens. This paper describes a process by which a very high proportion of citations in the dictionary are linked to individual words in new digital editions, using sorting and lexical information. The result is that users of the dictionary can view the citations in their full textual c...

The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden

The Anonymous Verse in the Third Grammatical Treatise

Lexicon Poeticum - Skaldic words beginning

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Jul 1, 2021

Kennings and variability

European Journal of Scandinavian Studies

A casual examination of the skaldic corpus suggests that a very large proportion of kennings are ... more A casual examination of the skaldic corpus suggests that a very large proportion of kennings are unique, that is, the nouns that form a kenning are very unlikely to appear elsewhere as a kenning, even when grammatical variation is taken into account. This enormous productivity is due to the principle of variability and substitution in kennings. The phenomenon is discussed in Fidjestøl’s 1974 structural analysis of the kenning system and presented there as a reversal of the principle of linguistic economy. This paper investigates this phenomenon by quantitatively analysing the kenning corpus as recorded in the skaldic database, in order to identify matching kennings within the corpus. The results are broken down according to the complexity of the kennings in question and are then examined in relation to the structural framework of the kenning system. It is shown, firstly, that a relatively small number of kennings are repeated (10–12 % of kennings are repeated), but that there is a f...

Text - Anonymous Poems, Hugsvinnsmál

Anonymous íslendingaþættir, Kumblbúa þáttr

Anonymous Poems, Hafliðamál

Relational data modelling of textual corpora: The Skaldic Project and its extensions

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2013

Skaldic poetry is a highly complex textual phenomenon both in terms of the intricacy of the poetr... more Skaldic poetry is a highly complex textual phenomenon both in terms of the intricacy of the poetry and its contextual environment. Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications such as that of the Text Encoding Initiative provide a means of semantic representation of some of these complexities. XML, however, has limitations in representing semantic relationships that do not conform to the tree model. This article presents the relational data model as a way of representing the structure of skaldic texts and their contextual environment. The relational data model raises both problems and possibilities for this type of project. The main problem addressed here is the representation of the syntagmatic structures of texts in a data model that is not intrinsically ordered. The advantages are also explored, including networked data editing and management, quantitative linguistic analysis, dynamic representation of the data, and the ability to extend the structure and reuse data for related projects without creating redundancy.

Medieval texts and cultures of Northern Europe, 2007

This paper presents an example of how a digital historical dictionary can be reengineered for new... more This paper presents an example of how a digital historical dictionary can be reengineered for new uses and new audiences, without changing the underlying data and editing processes. We start from the premise that a large proportion of users of historical dictionaries will be using them to read specific old texts as part of their studies or research in fields that use the texts as source material (literature, history, religion, etc.). Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP) has a vast archive of digitized texts, together with detailed referencing sufficient, in theory, to generate a glossary for each page and line of the texts. For the feature demonstrated here we reverse the normal dynamic dictionary-generation process. Instead of generating dictionary entries, the application searches for citations on an edition page and generates a running glossary to the edition, displaying it alongside the edition text. In this paper we present the new public interface to the dictionary (currently at onp.ku.dk) and the contextual glossaries that are generated from the dictionary's data. These have been developed using adaptive web technologies for use on a range of devices, including tablets and phones.

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

This study applies statistical approaches to the analysis of the genre relationships of Old Norse... more This study applies statistical approaches to the analysis of the genre relationships of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in order to expand our understanding of the relationships between works, their transmission, and their possible modes of reception, as manifested in the extant manuscripts. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the genre boundaries of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and presents an alternative method of engaging with this material in the form of computer-assisted analysis, i.e. data visualization and network analysis. Using data collected from major online databases of Old Norse-Icelandic manuscripts, we present the most complete to date network of co-occurrences in manuscripts of works belonging to a number of literary genres. The present study empirically demonstrates the manifoldness of the connections between the Old Norse-Icelandic works which transcend traditional scholarly genre boundaries. The study identifies two main communities within the n...

User Interfaces for Creating Digital Research

Research Methods for the Digital Humanities, 2018

This chapter focuses on the interaction between researchers and the data they create and work wit... more This chapter focuses on the interaction between researchers and the data they create and work with, that is, the user interface (UI). This chapter starts with a short history of UIs as a means of understanding attitudes towards technology. It describes different types of users of research resources, and how their background in the discipline and/or digital methods affects the way they interact with the data. The chapter goes on to outline different scenarios and solutions appropriate to each; and gives a specific example of a complex web application with a UI designed for different users and devices. Finally, it outlines some well-established principles for designing UIs.

Christopher Abram: Myths of the Pagan North: The Gods of the Norsemen

Scandinavica, 2011

In this article we discuss the evolution of data collection and use in the context of A Dictionar... more In this article we discuss the evolution of data collection and use in the context of A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP), which is a dictionary covering the medieval language of Iceland and Norway. This dictionary started as a collection of citations on paper slips, which were later used as the lexicographical material for a multi-volume, but incomplete, print edition. Today the citations form the basis of the digital version of ONP, currently available online at onp.ku.dk [1]. We account for the evolution of the data within three different periods, separated by certain milestones. We demonstrate how the legacy data have evolved and been enhanced throughout the years to provide innovative ways to bring together and take advantage of all the information gathered by ONP dur-

Narratives and textual sources

Traditional excerption-based historical dictionaries often provide a very detailed semantic analy... more Traditional excerption-based historical dictionaries often provide a very detailed semantic analysis of a high proportion of words in the corpora they cover. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose will have analyzed and defined around 7% of all words in a 11 million word corpus, for example. Linking the semantic analysis of excerpted citations to new digital texts of the works in the corpus offers the potential to give much more detailed context for the citations in the dictionary and at the same time contextual semantic information (definitions) for a high proportion of specific words in the corpus. The task is nontrivial as it involves linking separately-formed datasets consisting of tens of thousands of tokens. This paper describes a process by which a very high proportion of citations in the dictionary are linked to individual words in new digital editions, using sorting and lexical information. The result is that users of the dictionary can view the citations in their full textual c...

The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden

The Anonymous Verse in the Third Grammatical Treatise

The new skaldic project interface provides access to the project's resources in a truly cross-pla... more The new skaldic project interface provides access to the project's resources in a truly cross-platform environment, compatible with phones, tablets and desktop browsers. The platform incorporates the newly open-access volume I, including the General Introduction.

Early North Data Service (ENDS)

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Sources

Nottingham Rune Dictionary

Diana Whaley, Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Gade, Edith Marold, Guðrún Nordal and Tarrin Wills, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: Editors’ Manual. 2nd edition. (Sydney: Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney, 2002).

Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop and Tarrin Wills (eds), Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

Odd Einar Haugen, Matthew Driscoll, Karl Gunnar Johansson, Rune Kyrkjebø and Tarrin Wills, The Menota Handbook: Guidelines for the electronic encoding of medieval Nordic primary sources. (Bergen: Medieval Nordic Text Archive (Menota), 2008).

Terje Spurkland, Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions

Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, Vol. 2 (2006), 263-5

Christopher Abram, Myths of the Pagan North

Scandinavica 50/2 (2011), 114-16.

Murphy 2012d. Round Table: 'Documenting Data, Managing Mythology: Putting the Archaeology into the PCRN Project'

Presented October 2012, at the invitation-only ‘Old Norse Mythology in the Digital Age’ conferenc... more Presented October 2012, at the invitation-only ‘Old Norse Mythology in the Digital Age’ conference (Universität Bonn, Germany)

‘Designing and managing projects with complex data: The experience of the Skaldic Project and a way forward for the Myth Project’ — Old Norse Mythology in the Digital Age

Testosterone and Social Structure in Early Scandinavia

Kennings and Skaldic Complexity

Diatopic analysis of the Viking-Age lexicon

Testosterone, Violence and Aggression

Linguistic analysis of the skaldic corpus

The anonymous verses in the Third Grammatical Treatise

The Skaldic Editing Project

Theories of the Antiquity of Runes

Grammatical Instruction in Medieval Iceland: Some Observations Based on the Grammatical Treatises

Norse-Icelandic Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: A new edition

The rune chapters of the Third Grammatical Treatise and post-medieval interpretations

The electronic edition: issues for editors

The reception of myths concerning literacy and poetry

Physiology and Behaviour in the Sagas

‘The electronic representation of the Old Norse world’

Behavioural evidence for testosterone production and effects in early Northern literature

The development of skaldic complexity

Dating Skaldic Poetry: Possible New Methods

A Brief History of Runology